What's on Your Mind?

Have you seen larger-than-life depictions of your friends lately? They might have been sucked into the latest social trend: creating AI-generated caricatures. The trend itself is simple. Users input a common prompt: “Create a caricature of me and my job based on everything you know about me,” and upload a photo of themself, and, voila! ChatGPT (or any AI-image platform) spits out an over-the-top, cartoon-style image of you, your job, and anything else it’s learned about you. This ability is predicated on a robust ChatGPT (or other AI) chat history. Those who don’t have a close, personal relationship with the AI might need to give additional information to get a mo…

During his family’s annual summer vacations on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, high schooler Ajith Varikuti began to notice something concerning. Homes on the narrow line of barrier islands that Varikuti had grown up visiting from his hometown Charlotte were no longer there. “I started seeing more and more news articles about entire houses being completely destroyed. And it started clicking, because some of those houses that were being destroyed I’d seen in my previous years there,” he says. Varikuti, who was then a 9th grade student, knew there had to be a solution. So, as part of a student design competition organized by the design software company Autodesk, Varikuti …

For many women in the U.S. and around the world, motherhood comes with career costs. Raising children tends to lead to lower wages and fewer work hours for mothers—but not fathers—in the United States and around the world. As a sociologist, I study how family relationships can shape your economic circumstances. In the past, I’ve studied how motherhood tends to depress women’s wages, something social scientists call the “motherhood penalty.” I wondered: Can government programs that provide financial support to parents offset the motherhood penalty in earnings? A ‘motherhood penalty’ I set out with Therese Christensen, a Danish sociologist, to answer this…

If you ask my friends or colleagues to describe me, the unanimous response would be “she’s someone who gets sh*t done.” It’s become a well-worn badge of honor for me. Productivity isn’t something I do, it’s become something I am—and it’s exhausting. As it turns out, I’m not alone in this. For those of us who value productivity above all else, we’re far more likely to experience chronic stress or burnout. One 2025 study shows just how widespread levels of chronic stress and burnout are, with over one-third of the workforce reporting they were chronically stressed or burned out last year. Many of us feel like we’re walking a delicate line between balance and overwh…

AI isn’t eliminating human work. It’s redistributing human judgment, away from routine tasks and into the narrow zones where ambiguity is high, mistakes are costly, and trust actually matters. This shift helps explain a growing disconnect in the AI conversation. On one hand, models are improving at breathtaking speed. On the other, many ambitious AI deployments stall, scale more slowly than expected, or quietly revert to hybrid workflows. The issue isn’t capability. It’s trust. The trust gap most AI strategies overlook AI adoption doesn’t hinge on whether a system can do a task. It hinges on whether humans are willing to rely on its output without checking …

Valentine’s Day is known as the day to celebrate all things love—and also a day for expensive dates. However, a new offering from one of your favorite fast food chains may have you skipping the white table cloths and snagging something from McDonald’s instead. McDonald’s is serving up caviar this Valentine’s Day. But there’s a catch. In a Feb. 2 announcement, the chain explained what the latest offering entails. “To be known is to be loved, and we know our fans love pairing our crispy Chicken McNuggets with their favorite caviar,” it said. “Inspired by this perfect match, we’re dropping our first-ever McNugget Caviar kits featuring premium Baerii Sturgeon caviar o…

Target CEO Michael Fiddelke is reshuffling his leadership team and making other changes shortly after stepping into the top job at the retailer that has struggled operationally. Rick Gomez, the 13-year Target veteran who oversees the chain’s vast inventory of merchandise, will leave the company. And Jill Sando, the chief merchandising officer overseeing a handful of categories like apparel and home and who has been with the company since 1997, will retire. Lisa Roath, who oversaw food, essentials, and cosmetics, will take Fiddelke’s previous job as chief operating officer, the company said Tuesday. Cara Sylvester, who had been chief guest experience officer, will …

Resilience is no longer just about grit or recovering from setbacks. It’s about anticipating change, staying agile in uncertainty, and continuously evolving. The most future-ready organizations build resilience not just at the leadership level, but across their entire workforce—equipping employees with the skills, mindsets, and support systems they need to turn disruption into momentum.  People today expect more—learning, development, well-being, and strong leadership—to help them navigate the future of work. Companies that invest in these areas don’t just retain top talent; they build workforces that are unstoppable. Here are four powerful strategies to embed r…

An outbreak of Nipah virus outbreak in India is currently causing alarm for health officials and travelers across a number of countries in Asia. On January 26, health officials from India notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of two laboratory-confirmed cases of Nipah virus (NiV) infection in West Bengal State. No additional NiV cases have been detected. Following news of the outbreak, authorities in some Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, have ramped up airport health screening efforts. However, according to Reuters, the screenings are more for “reassurance” than a tactic to stop the spread. The WHO says risk …

After a viral disappearance and rumors of his demise, Duo the owl is alive—and he’s finally ready to speak: “I said, ‘It’s either Spanish or vanish.’” Watch the full tell-all interview and hear from the bird behind the chaos. View the full article

When I was in high school in the 1990s, my physics teacher pulled me aside with a question he couldn’t shake: “How do they get every computer in the world to talk to every other computer?” He’d seen how hard it was to agree on basics like electrical outlets or phone dialing standards. Yet suddenly we had this internet thing where a machine in Thunder Bay could talk to one in Tokyo in milliseconds. No central planner. No global treaty. Somehow it just worked. The real answer is less magic and more mindset: a systems principle called Postel’s Law. In plain language: Be strict in what you send; be generous in what you accept. When I talk to you, I should do my…

All sense of survivors’ guilt was fleeting for those residents whose homes remained standing after wildfires ripped through the Los Angeles area three months ago. Many worried that smoke from the Eaton wildfire that destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 18 people may have carried toxins, including lead, asbestos and heavy metals, into their homes. But they struggled to convince their insurers to test their properties to ensure it was safe to return. Nicole Maccalla, a data scientist, said embers burned more than half of her roof, several windows and eaves were damaged, and her house in Altadena was left filled with ash, debris, soot and damaged appliances. She…

The humanoid robotics revolution is just around the corner. Test models are already working in factories alongside human beings across the world, while AI companies develop new foundation models designed to help robots navigate their environments as easily as humans do. But computer “brains” are useless without the skeletons that give humanoid robots their form—and the many components that make up those skeletons need to come from somewhere. Alongside bearings, which reduce friction, motors, and gears, the average humanoid robot relies on dozens of screws—key components that convert the rotational motion produced by a motor into linear motion. Traditionally, ball …

When people talk about how AI might reshape media, the term “hyper-personalization” comes up a lot. In broad terms, it means that AI can tailor the experience around your preferences—assuming it has enough data about you. To some extent, algorithms and ad tech have been doing this for years, recommending links and stories based on your clicks and browsing behavior. What generative AI brings to the table is the ability to adapt the content itself. A large language model could, in theory, understand the kinds of stories I care about and modify what I’m reading—maybe by adding an angle relevant to my region. It could even offer up different lengths or even formats. If I’…

The rise of OpenClaw, a proactive agentic AI controlled through interfaces more familiar to the average user than tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code, which enthralled early adopters over the holiday period, has been one of the most seismic shifts in the AI world since the release of ChatGPT. By piggybacking on user-friendly interfaces paired with powerful AI agent technology, OpenClaw has pushed AI further into the public eye. Thousands have spun up their own AI agents using the tech, and many of those agents have ended up on Moltbook, a social network where AI agents can post and interact with one another. The platform, which looks a lot like Reddit, was developed by…

It looks like a standard shipping container. But a metal box at a London factory is aimed at solving one of the shipping industry’s biggest challenges: how to cut CO2 emissions on cargo ships. The tech, from a startup called Seabound, can capture as much as 95% of the CO2 emissions from the exhaust on ship. The company is now preparing to install a set of the containers on a cargo ship in its first commercial deployment after years of development and pilot tests. “The shipping industry is one of the last hard-to-abate sectors,” says 30-year-old CEO Alisha Fredriksson, who cofounded the company in 2021 after working as a consultant and seeing the need for a new…